Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Day 335: Fighting Doubts

I'm no Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, but I'd like to think that my professional career is fairly accomplished.

I worked my way up to a pretty good gig at a large metropolitan daily newspaper over 13+ years, and leveraged that job into a VP job in Los Angeles. If I turned around to look out my office window, I saw the Hollywood sign about two miles away. My team had responsibility for a large global client's US work, with a budget of more than $1 million.

A few years later I was the first communications manager for one of the nation's largest healthcare service providers.

Former work colleagues thought enough of me to hire me away from that job for a bold startup venture.

In my job after that, I was responsible for media coverage overseeing the world's largest retailer.

I think those are all quality gigs.

So when you are looking for a job and not having success, you might get discouraged. I certainly have been. This is a good time to take stock of what you've done before, and maybe appreciate it a little bit. Dig deeper and think about what you learned at each of those stops, and, if they were pretty good jobs, cut yourself a little slack and recognize that at some point, that experience is going to work in your favor.

My last three jobs ended because of a shortage of funding, and two layoffs. Talk about snakebit! But in each scenario, there was absolutely nothing I could do to avoid an unpleasant ending. I did great work at each. And I wasn't singled out in any case. The business that folded took 26 people down with it. The first layoff was the fourth in a wave; 16 got the axe that day. And, that layoff preceded by only a few months a merger that took about 160 more jobs away.

The last layoff was the end of a 50-percent reduction in force.

It's not great today to rationalize these problems, but at least it provides a little comfort in knowing that every time it was because of economic problems well beyond my control.

Looking for jobs every day, and using many different avenues, I'm seeing growth out there. There are more opportunities. It's just a matter of time before one of them is MY opportunity.